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Looking for a Walnut Expense Tracker Alternative? Here's What Changed and What to Use

Walnut, the popular Indian expense tracker, became axio and shifted toward lending. If you just want clean, private expense tracking, here are the alternatives that fit.

Ramana Chary · July 17, 2026 · 6 min read

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For years, Walnut was one of India's most-loved expense trackers. Its trick was reading your bank SMS messages and automatically building a picture of your spending — no manual entry needed. If you've come here searching for a "Walnut alternative," you've probably noticed the app isn't what it used to be. Here's what actually happened, and how to choose a replacement that fits what you liked about it.

What happened to Walnut

Walnut was acquired and folded into axio(the brand formerly known as Capital Float). The app you'll find today under that lineage is oriented around credit — pay-later and loan products from a regulated lender — rather than being the focused, private expense tracker Walnut originally was. The original SMS-based expense-tracking experience was wound down in the transition.

That's a reasonable business direction, but it's a mismatch if all you ever wanted was to see your spending clearly without a lending product attached. Which is exactly why so many former users are looking for something else.

First, decide what you actually valued about Walnut

"Walnut alternative" means different things depending on which part you're chasing. Be honest about which of these you're really after, because it changes the answer:

A) The automatic SMS-based tracking.This was Walnut's signature. Be aware, though, that SMS-reading has fallen out of favour for good reasons: it's inconsistent (it misses cash and many UPI patterns), it requires deep phone permissions, and parsing every incoming message is a real privacy and scam-exposure risk. Most modern, privacy-first apps have deliberately moved away from it.

B) A clean, focused expense tracker. If what you loved was simply seeing your spending organised in one calm place — budgets, categories, monthly summaries — this is very much still available, and arguably better than ever.

C) No loan products in your face.If the shift toward lending is what pushed you away, you'll want an app whose business model isn't lending.

The trade-off worth understanding

The one honest trade-off in leaving SMS-based tracking behind is manual entry — you log spends yourself instead of the app reading them from your messages. In practice this is less painful than it sounds, and it comes with real upsides:

  • It's more accurate. SMS parsing silently misses cash spends and many UPI patterns. Manual logging captures everything, including the ₹40 chai the SMS approach never saw.
  • It's far more private. No app reading your entire message inbox to find the financial bits.
  • It's more honest data.You categorise as you go, so a month later you actually know what "₹1,150 at some merchant" was for.

A good app makes logging fast enough — a couple of taps — that this becomes a five-second reflex rather than a chore. (If you're moving off SMS tracking, our guide to tracking UPI spending walks through building the habit.)

What to look for in a replacement

  • A business model that isn't lending— so the app's incentives are aligned with helping you spend well, not borrow
  • Fast manual logging — because entry speed is what determines whether you keep it up
  • Everything in one place — UPI, cards, and cash together, not just what an SMS feed can see
  • Money lent and owed tracked properly — Walnut had bill-split and lending features many users relied on
  • No ads, and full data export and deletion — the basics of an app that respects you
  • Indian formatting — lakhs and crores, sensible categories

How Vyaya compares as a Walnut alternative

Vyaya is a focused, private expense tracker — not a lending app, and it never will be. It covers the parts of Walnut people actually miss: a clean dashboard and monthly insights, budgets and categories built for Indian spending, and proper tracking of money you lend to friends and family, plus what you owe. Instead of reading your SMS, it uses fast manual logging (a couple of taps) and receipt scanning for bigger bills, which is more accurate and far more private. No ads, no loan pushes, no data selling, with full export and one-tap account deletion.

The one thing it deliberately doesn't do is read your messages — a trade of a little convenience for a lot of privacy and accuracy.

Frequently asked questions

Is the Walnut expense tracker still available?
Walnut was acquired and folded into axio, which is now oriented around credit and pay-later products rather than being a focused expense tracker. The original SMS-based expense-tracking experience was wound down in that transition, which is why many former users look for an alternative.
What's a good alternative to Walnut for expense tracking?
Look for a focused, private tracker whose business model isn't lending, with fast manual logging, support for UPI, cards and cash together, proper lend/owe tracking, no ads, and full data export and deletion. Vyaya is built along these lines.
Do alternatives track expenses automatically from SMS like Walnut did?
Most modern, privacy-first apps have deliberately moved away from SMS reading because it's inconsistent, requires heavy permissions, and is a privacy risk. They use fast manual logging instead, which is more accurate (it captures cash too) and far more private.
Why would I switch from an automatic tracker to a manual one?
Manual logging captures everything — including cash and UPI spends that SMS parsing misses — and lets you categorise as you go, so your data is more accurate and meaningful. It's also far more private, since no app needs to read your entire message inbox.

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